


Pretty

by blythechild



Series: 2018 Advent Adventures with Blythe and Deejay [4]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Attraction, Awkward Romance, Casual Sex, Drinking & Talking, Drunken Confessions, Drunkenness, House Party, Kissing, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Romantic Gestures, Sex, Unrequited, We Just Love Each Other, pretty boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 03:03:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 8,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16966482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: Hotch thinks Reid is pretty and then is forced to explain it.This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. It was created as a personal amusement. This story contains explicit content and should not be read by those under the age of 18.





	1. Chapter 1

The party had reached its dangerous zenith. Aaron had collapsed into Garcia’s couch and felt he might be swallowed whole by it. He was certain his body had structural integrity when he sat down, but now his muscles ignored him and his skeleton seemed to have evaporated. This was going to be an issue if it persisted; he was sure you needed working fingers to be an FBI agent at the very minimum. He looked down at the half-finished glass in his barely-there grasp and wondered what Garcia had put in it. And then he wondered how many he’d had… maybe it wasn’t all Garcia’s fault.

Someone sighed and shuffled against him awkwardly, and it took a tremendous amount of focus to get his head to turn enough to see who it was. Garcia was smooshed against his side, sinking into the sofa with little hope of escape, much like him. Her dress was rumpled, and her hair was slightly flatter on the side pressed against his shoulder. She wiggled again, face creasing like she was frustrated at her lack of progress, and then she gave up with a huff and melted into him. Eventually, she shuffled enough to look up, blinking in flushed surprise to find herself snuggling with her boss.

“When did you get here?” she smiled. Aaron felt fuzzy and confused.

“Originally, this evening, or at this moment?” he rasped through a dry throat and then washed it away with his drink before thinking about it. “Because I only have a solid answer for the first part.”

“You’re funny,” she giggled as she cuddled an arm across his stomach. She was like a determined cat who wasn’t worried about whether her target wanted to be snuggled in the first place. Aaron wasn’t much of a cat person. “That was a very Reid-like answer.”

Aaron’s eyes swam about the room – and swam was the appropriate verb because everything had a soft, delayed quality to it. On the opposite side of the living room Reid was stretched out across a loveseat, his head in J.J.’s lap as Morgan peered down at him from where he leaned against the seat back. Reid’s eyes were closed and J.J. was braiding his hair into strange clumps, half of which stood straight up from his skull. His frame was loose, legs dangling over the far armrest and with one arm hanging down to the floor next to a forgotten glass. He looked asleep, but his lips started moving as Aaron watched, and Morgan talked back, his gaze too serious to be entirely sober, though he was still valiantly upright. Aaron had a moment’s jealousy at his co-worker’s verticality. Reid and Morgan spoke back and forth, too distantly to be heard over the music, but Reid never opened his eyes. J.J. smiled every now and then, flicking a glance to Morgan and then back to the charge in her lap. Her gaze for Reid held a warmth you could feel across the room.

“He’s like… a lanky pietà…” Aaron mumbled to himself.

“What?” Garcia asked, and then squinted across her living room.

“Reid, lying there in J.J.’s lap. They’re like a Renaissance sculpture.”

“Hmmm,” Garcia gave that some serious thought. Then she made little jabbing motions with her bejeweled fingers. “His hair is more… stabby than I’m used to seeing in classic art…”

Aaron smiled gently, watching J.J.’s fingers skim Reid’s hair away from his face as she parted another section to be braided. His sharp edges were on full display – the cheekbones, the high brow, the square jawline, the stark throat leading to the dip at his collarbones lost in his dress shirt – Michelangelo would’ve loved Spencer Reid. And now, in this relaxation, his staccato lines flowed outwards from his body in inviting curves, almost begging to be brushed, fingers tracing along them to know their beauty…

“And isn’t a pietà about a mother holding a _corpse?_ ” Garcia continued unfazed. “That’s just icky. I mean, who pays a stack of cash for art about a dead body? How is that beautiful? If you did that these days, someone would investigate your ass. Probably us.”

Aaron chuckled. “The beauty in it isn’t the moment, Garcia. The moment is heinous. It’s the emotion behind the event. The loss makes it beautiful – it transfers beauty onto something which is inherently ugly. It’s transcendent.”

Garcia peered back up at him, her nose wrinkling in concentration. “You are way more introspective when you’re pailed, Bossman.”

He hummed and shrugged a little.

“Still, no matter what your views on corpse-art,” Garcia sighed, watching the soft, inebriated chaos she had wrought like a minor deity. “Reid is no dead Jesus. Thank goodness.”

“He’s pretty though,” Aaron mumbled, lost in the lines Reid’s mouth made as he countered something Morgan had just said. Then he realized Garcia had gone rigid at his side. He looked down and saw her blinking back as if she’d just woken from a deep sleep.

“He’s what?”

Oh. Had he meant to say that? It was difficult to tell; this all felt like a slightly surreal dream and he was a step behind everything.

“Pretty.” Aaron tried to shrug it off. “I mean, he _is_. Everyone says so.”

“No, us girls think he’s cute,” Garcia corrected, her stare getting sharper by the second. “Morgan’s the only one who calls him ‘pretty’, and he does that to boost the genius’s confidence ‘cause you know he’s never thought much of himself that way.” Garcia suddenly sat up nearly knocking Aaron in the chin in the process. “Do you really think he’s PRETTY?”

Aaron sighed. He was too tired for this.

“We’re all adults, Penelope. We can admit someone is attractive objectively. This isn’t high school, where we can’t tell the difference between what we see and what we feel. Reid is pretty. So are you.”

“You think _I’m_ pretty? Just how often do you think about this stuff?”

“Garcia, I’m a profiler – I’m paid to think about what I observe. And look around you. Have you ever seen such a collection of attractive people? When you step back and consider it, it’s a little shocking.”

She glanced around the room and some of her shock subsided. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. This team has an above-average percentage of hubba-hubba going on… But still, when you say a guy is pretty-”

“It’s a statement of fact, nothing more,” he interrupted softly. “I’m old enough now to appreciate that when I see it. But that’s all it is: appreciation.”

Garcia looked at him dubiously. Or maybe it was irritation. Or drunken confusion. All of it was possible and he was having a hard time differentiating things at the moment. Like why Reid suddenly reminded him of an image he’d loved since he was a boy.

“C’mon, Penelope. I’m drunk and warm and content. What more do you want?”

She huffed, and then after a moment decided to shrug off whatever was bothering her about him. She shuffled back into his side, leaning her head against his chest as they both watched the room.

“My goal is always drunk, warm, and content,” she murmured, and he chuckled back making her curls bounce against him. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer.

“You are our weapon of mass happiness.”

“I’ll take it,” she said. “Thank you for thinking I’m pretty.”

“That’s because you are. An objective observation,” he rumbled, and squeezed her shoulder.

“I always sorta thought J.J. was your type.”

“At my age, types can get you into trouble. Fortunately, I don’t have much time to consider what I do or do not want.”

“You could _make_ time, you know?”

He sighed. “No. Too much work to do. Besides, how could any outsider compare to this collection of beauty? The bar has been set unrealistically high.”

He swung the hand holding his glass wide to gesture to everyone crammed into Garcia’s apartment. He sloshed the remaining booze over his fingers and along his shirt cuff, which was probably for the best. Garcia laughed and blotted him with her vibrant dress, declaring him to be the best sort of surprising, sentimental, cuddly drunk. And then she latched onto him for the reminder of the party like a barnacle, which he found oddly flattering. By the time she kicked off her pumps and was half-strewn across him asking his considered opinion on possibly-mortifying cat costumes for Sergio, he assumed that she’d forgotten their previous topic, and he was glad.

But she hadn’t.


	2. Chapter 2

Aaron walked into the conference room hoping to find his team but found only Reid staring at a cluttered evidence board instead. For a moment he became irritated, wondering where everyone was, and then it all fell away when he noticed the light in the room. 

It was one of those brilliant, crystalline winter days that took your breath away with its sharpness while bathing everything in pale sunshine. The conference room windows were uncovered, letting long vertical slashes of golden light tattoo the carpet, the office furniture, and Reid’s board. It was casting long shadows on Reid as well, one side of him turned slightly towards the light, making him glow while his far side was all smudges of indigos and greys. It was a quiet chiaroscuro highlighting lines and small movements, and the rich colors Reid chose to wear. He was frowning, his eyes and mouth creased with focus, exaggerating the small shadows there and making him seem older than he was. Then he reached out for a document pinned to the far side of the board with many others. His shirt was rolled to the elbows despite the season, and his reach twisted to define his forearm in the light. He held the document in his hand as he considered it – long fingers, long arms, long everything – and Aaron found himself staring at Reid’s nails, and the way their pale half-moons caught the sun from the window. Then Reid quickly tacked the document under a column marked ‘equivocal?’, and Aaron suddenly wondered what in the second crime scene report Reid had decided was ambiguous.

“Are you staring at the board, or me?” Reid asked, never turning to face Aaron. His gaze was still focused on the evidence in front of him.

Aaron felt his pulse quicken for an instant, as if he’d been caught at something. “Where is everyone?” he asked instead.

Reid blinked, glanced to the conference table, and then did a full 360° turn with a befuddled look overtaking his focused creases. He ended up back where he started, staring at his board.

“I don’t know,” he sighed. Aaron smiled when it was safe to do so. 

“What’s the issue with the second crime scene report?” he asked as he stepped into the room and towards the table.

“He said ‘those people’.”

“Who did?”

“Detective Brampton,” Reid gestured with a flick of two long fingers, as if he were counting something off in his head. “When I spoke to him, he was quick to suggest a crime of opportunity, possibly linked to the local migrant worker population. He said, ‘those people’ twice.” 

Reid turned and finally looked Aaron in the eye, but it was almost like Aaron wasn’t there and he was staring at a transcript instead. “I think he keeps his prejudice tightly in check while on the job, but it’s clouded his view of this crime. He wrote up the report, so I believe his insights are tainted. He’s far too focused on finding a suspect in an itinerant worker. There may be insights in his report, but… how could we know for sure? We could waste valuable time chasing down leads based on perception rather than observation.”

“Agreed,” Aaron nodded, feeling himself slip into a work scowl. “That’s unfortunate. We’ll lose valuable elements in building the profile if we have to discount everything he touched.”

Reid hummed and turned back to the board. “Yes, but there’s always more. We’ll find it.”

That statement warmed Aaron unexpectedly. Reid was an optimistic person, but it was quiet, secret, as if it gave too much of himself away to admit he had faith in people. It felt like a gift to see a glimpse of it because, even if it was just a glimpse, it meant he had faith in you as well. Aaron’s scowl softened as he thought about that and stared at the wrinkles of Reid’s shirt. They gave the impression that he moved a lot and his clothes twisted to hold him in, even though he was calm and still just now.

“So, it was the board and not me,” Reid said, now peering at the sign-in sheet for the evidence lock-up.

“Pardon?”

“The staring.”

“I wasn’t staring.”

“You weren’t?” He didn’t really phrase it like a question, which was annoying since it clearly was.

“Not at you. Why would I be staring at you?”

“Because you think I’m pretty.” Reid said it without looking back, striding over to a banker’s box in the corner of the room, and returning to the board with an envelope. He hunched forward and compared the signatures while Aaron watched the back of his head and silently cursed his tech analyst.

“Garcia,” he mumbled.

“Maybe she thought I’d be upset by the term coming from anyone other than Morgan. I think everyone thinks I’m less comfortable in my masculinity than I am.” Reid stepped back from the board and shook his head. “Brampton’s all over the evidence collection from the second scene too. He’s gonna be a real problem for us…”

“She shouldn’t have said anything, period.” Aaron’s mouth was suddenly dry, and he felt ashamed though he couldn’t pin down the reason for it. 

“Why?” Reid turned to face him, and now Aaron had his complete focus. “Are you upset I know? Don’t be. It’s fine.”

“I’m not upset,” though he was starting to get that way and wanted that to end. “It was something I said while drunk at a party. I barely remember the context of the conversation. And as you just stated, you’re fine with it.”

“Yes,” Reid blinked, then returned to his work. It was impossible to parse his reaction, especially with his back to Aaron for most of the conversation.

Silence descended in the room as Reid flicked paperwork from one column on the board to another making notes on sticky pads and tagging various documents with them. It went on for a few minutes while Aaron watched; he wasn’t even sure if Reid knew he was still there. It was as if the brief awkwardness had never happened. Aaron shrugged his shoulders under his jacket and released the tension there before sighing.

“I’ll let you get to it and try to find the others…” He turned for the door.

“You’re pretty too.”

Aaron looked back, but Reid was still staring at the board. The side of him lit by the winter sun creased once again in the same focus he’d had at the beginning. He scrawled something, tagged a document with it, and then mumbled under his breath as he raced back to the evidence boxes in the corner. Lost in the details once more.

“T-thank you.” 

The words were sluggish, perhaps from shock or disuse. Reid didn’t acknowledge them, plying through marked evidence bags he’d dumped out of a container at his feet. Aaron spent another moment watching him and then left quickly. His pulse was flickering, making him nervous, and his collar began to feel too snug. He went back to his office instead of searching for his missing team and didn’t look too closely at why he’d fled from a colleague who’d simply given him a throwaway compliment.


	3. Chapter 3

Aaron began to notice things. 

Reid held doors for him, never looking at him or acknowledging murmured thanks. He just did it, seemingly without thinking. He brought Aaron coffee – not always, but usually when he was fetching a cup for himself. He deferred to Aaron while in the field, but not in the expected ways. He waited for Aaron to choose a seat in a room before he did. He watched Aaron absorb new information before offering the opinions Aaron was certain he’d already formed. And he was the first to look up when Aaron entered a room, waiting patiently for the others to notice and face whatever news he brought with him. None of it felt _new_ to Aaron, although he’d only now become aware of it. Had it always been this way from the beginning? Or was this something they fell into over time and with familiarity? Reid seemed comfortable in it, and Aaron envied that, because now that he saw it clearly, it made him self-conscious. Which was stupid reaction to have to a colleague’s consideration.

Aaron decided to stop looking for the ways things were suddenly different to him without cause, and to focus on the ease of them instead. Act as if it had always been this way – because maybe it had been – and forget the rest. After all, there are worse things to be on the receiving end of than unconscious deference.


	4. Chapter 4

His head dipped forward, and he jerked it back with a sudden, painful snap that he immediately regretted. Groaning softly, he rubbed his neck and wished he could turn off the part of his brain that refused to let him sleep. He was so tired, and far too old to simply shine it on until his body gave into it. The air on the jet was stifling in a way only fake pressurization could provide. He felt pressed in from all sides, as if the air itself wanted a piece of him along with his job, the case, and the rest of his life. That thought brought with it a flush of irritation, and he was uncomfortably warm, forcing him to pop his collar button open to breathe. He shifted and felt uselessly at odds with his body, trying to keep his fidgeting quiet in the darkened cabin while also wondering where the sudden urge to fight himself had come from. 

A hand slid over his shoulder and became a warm pressure on his jacket. It distracted and silenced the annoyance in him with the simple slide of tailored wool. He glanced up and saw Reid staring down at him with a vague sense of worry flavoring his edges. His other hand opened revealing a small pill.

“Take this. It’ll help,” he murmured. Aaron glanced at the offering, which was white and unmarked. “Don’t worry, it’s non-narcotic,” Reid continued. “I use them on occasion when I really need to sleep.”

“Why aren’t you using one now?” Aaron rumbled as if he’d been sleeping, which he might have been, after a fashion.

“Don’t want to sleep right now,” Reid answered, hand still outstretched, waiting.

Aaron plucked the pill and swallowed it down with some water from a glass beside him. Reid made a small noise of relief, and his hand slid away from Aaron’s shoulder.

“You know, you’re probably the only person I’d accept unknown drugs from,” Aaron murmured as he leaned back into his seat. Reid shuffled in the jet aisle to watch him.

“That’s a little ironic,” he said with a curl hitching up one side of his mouth. It made Aaron respond in kind.

“Not really. We all know you’d sooner murder someone than encourage addiction.”

Aaron watched carefully for a reaction. Technically, Reid had never once discussed his drug problem with him, but here they were _not_ talking about it like it was a given. Another small gesture of trust Aaron had failed to notice in the past. Reid shrugged, like the glancing reference didn’t bother him at all.

“That’s true. I’d never do that to anyone I cared about.” The words were carefully chosen. Aaron could see the way Reid was trying to disguise the calculation of them.

“And that’s why we trust you,” he murmured, fascinated but Reid’s response and the way the dim lighting of the cabin hid his tells, but made other things clearer.

Reid’s face was in shadow, his eyes dark-on-dark and unreadable. But light reflected from their edges, and Aaron knew they were moving, glancing here and there, rapidly moving over him in the quiet hum where they were the only two awake. He didn’t follow up the statement with anything and didn’t apologize for staring. In fact, it seemed as if he was encouraging Aaron to stare back. _Look if you want. It’s fine._ So, Aaron did.

The light from the few seat lamps left on made a diagonal slash across Reid’s body: his lower half was detailed while his upper body was lost to outlines and gestures. He stood with his traditional slouch; he was only ever at his full height when he was fully enmeshed in something – a clue, a fact, something to be unraveled. It was almost as if standing straight siphoned too much energy away that he needed for other things. Aaron followed that crooked line down until he reached the boundary where the obscured suddenly became noticeable. Again, his shirt was rolled to the elbows, a hint of purple cotton peeking into the light. But it led Aaron to Reid’s bare arm dangling at his side, too bright by far against the shadows and the gloom of his charcoal pants. 

His sparseness seemed to shout loudly then – the ulna and radius defining his shape, sweeping elegantly down to his thin wrist with its oversized watch hanging loosely around it, and then descending into those alien fingers, impossibly long and thin, overexaggerated to the point where Aaron could imagine seeing the bones beneath the skin. They twitched once as he watched them, a strange stutter as if Reid wanted to hide them and then forced himself to stop. 

Aaron thought Reid’s hands were amazing, so unique and transformative when he used them well. Reid once joked that he could mesmerize lesser creatures with them, and then had demonstrated on a chicken. Morgan immediately declared him to be a witch, but a good witch, with silly hair. Aaron smiled suddenly remembering the moment, and then he looked up into the shadows of Reid’s face. Reid stepped towards Aaron then, snapping him from his memories, and his other hand slid across Aaron’s shoulder again, pressing warmly as it had before. Aaron found himself staring up into Reid’s indecipherable expression and holding his breath. He didn’t know why.

“You should try to rest,” Reid murmured, and his hand remained.

Aaron nodded, mute in this quiet place that had gotten loud on him in an instant. Then he did something surprising: he reached up and covered Reid’s hand with his own. He added warmth and pressure to that which was already there, and he let it linger. He could feel the bones he’d just imagined, his fingers alive with the outline of Reid’s beneath them. And having another against him made him feel sated, like a bright, cold morning with frost on the windows and you happily beneath blankets with no other place to be. 

He breathed sharply, wondering if Reid’s mystery pill was working already, lulling him into waking dreams. Reid did nothing, watching him a moment longer, and then gently slipping his hand from under Aaron’s and away. He walked back to his seat across the aisle, and sunk into it without another word, picking up an abandoned book and curling his hand under his chin as he bent to it in concentration. Aaron watched it happen, and then quickly turned away, switching his seat light off for privacy. His throat was tight again; he swallowed more water to ease it. His pulse thumped at his tired temples too loudly, and he tried to rub it into submission.

Something was happening to him.


	5. Chapter 5

The next day he was in early. Well, it was a normal start for him, but early for everyone else. He strode through the lobby, barely raising his head to nod at the security desk, shaking off the cold from the edges of his wool overcoat. Washington Post in hand, he scowled at the day’s headlines that he had no real interest in, and jabbed the call button for the elevator without looking. He was already thinking about a fresh mug of coffee and which reports he could finalize before the rest of the crew got to the office.

“Hello.”

He looked up and saw Reid shuffling towards him past the security checkpoint. His cheeks were flushed, eyes bright, like he was nervous. But maybe it was colder outside than Aaron realized, and Reid’s peacoat looked thin.

“Hello,” he said, suddenly feeling nervous as well as if it were contagious. “You’re here early.”

“So are you.” Reid made it next to him, smiling briefly as he glanced him over, then looking away and to the elevator button which was busy being lit and useless simultaneously. “Couldn’t sleep after all, huh? Sorry.”

“I slept fine. Thanks for the pill – I’m sure it helped.” 

Aaron felt the ghost of Reid’s hand on his shoulder and swallowed hard. He thought about Reid’s fingers under his. He thought about the way the muscles in his arms moved. He remembered Reid lying in J.J.’s lap as she carded his tangles away from his face, the stark architecture of it… Christ, this was bad. Something had turned in him.

“Oh, good.” Reid was still staring at the elevator call button, a serious crease forming between his brows. “I hoped it would. I…”

He shook his head and clamped his lips into a thin line, still staring straight ahead. Aaron was about to ask him what was wrong when the elevator dinged, and the doors opened with a soft whoosh. They both stepped in, turned to obediently watch the floor counter above the door, and Aaron pressed the sixth-floor button. The contraption was old and slow – everyone complained about it – and it made a few stops on the lower floors. They shuffled to the back of the cab, shoulders brushing, as a few people got on and hopped off. Soon they were alone again, rising at a snail’s pace. Aaron stared ahead at the stainless steel doors, angry at his sudden anxiety, angry at the elevator, angry at Reid for being so uncharacteristically silent… And then, in a split-second, that all ended.

One of Reid’s fingers curled lightly around Aaron’s hand at his side. It outlined Aaron’s pinky, and then skimmed across his palm to collect his hand in Reid’s own. His grip held Aaron’s tentatively, even when Aaron didn’t move. Shock made Aaron snap his head sideways too sharply sending a zip of complaint down his spine. He stared at Reid, but Reid was looking at his feet, hair drooping into his eyes to hide them. All Aaron could think was _‘What the-’_ , and then his body lit up with a feral joy at being close to someone. His chest tightened and his breath got short, but above all he was a mix of frightened confusion in that his mind and body seemed to be at war with one another. He was about to pull back and reassess, when he saw the faint vibration in Reid’s curls. He was shaking, quietly, beside him.

Aaron took a deep breath and held it, then, still staring at Reid who was furiously staring at his own feet, Aaron flexed his hand in their grip. Reid’s long fingers slipped into the spaces between Aaron’s, and he closed his grip more firmly around them. They were knit together now, palm to palm, and Aaron marveled at his bravery when his thumb began to stroke the outline of Reid’s. He stared at Reid, open-mouthed, waiting for permission to breathe, waiting for _something_. But Reid kept staring at his shoes. The elevator rose, the silence stretched, and Aaron’s thumb kept circling, circling, circling…

The annoying contraption dinged their arrival at the sixth floor, and Reid suddenly let go, looking up at the floor display above the door like nothing happened. Aaron almost rocked back on his feet, torn loose from what was keeping him steady.

“Eight, seven, one, five, two,” Reid said as the elevator hopped, and the doors slid apart.

“W-what?”

Reid stepped out and then turned back to face Aaron, eyes worried and hands suddenly shoved safely in his pockets. “Eight, seven, one, five, two,” he said again quietly, like it was a secret, then he turned and was gone, striding to his desk.

Aaron was frozen in the elevator until the doors began to close, and he forced them apart before he was taken on an unnecessary side trip to the lobby again. It buzzed angrily as it departed, leaving him standing, lost, on the edge of the office. He shook himself, rolled his shoulders and huffed loudly to clear out the cobwebs. Fixing a scowl in place he marched to his office, becoming the caricature of himself he slid into whenever he was unsure of what to do. As he walked, his hand flexed over and over, trying to shake away the feeling of fingers linked with his.


	6. Chapter 6

It took him three days to figure out what the numbers meant. In the end, it was simple, and he’d wasted time making it unnecessarily complex. He stood in front of Reid’s apartment and wondered what sort of reception he’d get. He felt tight everywhere and it was getting hard to breathe. Finally, he found the courage to raise his hand and knock, hoping that Reid was home and would answer before he went into cardiac arrest. This one time he was lucky. There was shuffling behind the door, then a quick flurry of clicks as the door swung wide and Reid stared at him with an expression that was even wider. They watched each other for a moment, then Reid stood aside and wordlessly beckoned him in. The door shut again, and Aaron turned, watching Reid as he fiddled with the locks and then hesitantly stepped closer.

“Hi,” he murmured.

“Hi,” Aaron whispered back, feeling heat creep up his throat and into his face.

Another terrible moment of silence happened and then Reid took another step forward.

“I thought… you wouldn’t come.” He ducked his head. “I thought perhaps I had mistaken you.”

“It took me a while to figure out the numbers were a door code.”

Reid’s head snapped up. “Oh. I see. Yes… I could have been clearer, I suppose.”

“I think you were clear.” Aaron tried for a smile. It was hard because his heart was pounding and he felt a little sick because of it. “I needed the time to sort through my confusion.”

“And have you sorted through that?” Reid took another step so that he was right in front of Aaron. A few inches separated them, but Aaron could feel his heat, that frisson that tells you someone is in your sphere making the hair on the back of your neck tingle in warning. “Or is this visit about something else?”

Aaron took his first step forward. They brushed from thighs to abdomen. Reid’s eyes flicked momentarily to Aaron’s mouth and then back to his gaze. His tongue licked his lips absently, and it lit a rush of something deep in Aaron’s gut. His hand found its way to Reid’s hip, but he wanted it along his throat, cupping his jaw, tugging through his hair so he could pull his mouth to him.

“I’ve never… I’ve only been with three people in my whole life,” he whispered.

“You haven’t done anything yet,” Reid murmured, his hand outlining Aaron’s at his waist. “And you don’t have to. I’m not in the habit of doing favors, Aaron, not even for my friends. I reached out because I wanted to, but you don’t owe me anything.”

“You don’t… _want_ anything from me?” Now he was confused.

“Of course, I want something. I want you, here, now, with me. I want that very much. But not if you’re unsure, not if something else is driving you in this direction.”

“What else would be driving me?”

Reid sighed, and it brushed Aaron’s throat making his shiver. “It’s sex, Aaron. I want to feel your body with mine. I want to give it joy. It’s not anonymous, or without care – there’s trust here otherwise I couldn’t offer it. But it’s still just sex.”

“And you think I can’t do that.”

“I think you’ve never _tried_ to do that. You care for people very deeply. Still waters, and all that…”

Aaron considered him for a moment, his fingers circling at Reid’s hip absently. “What if it became more… afterwards? What would you do if you found yourself wanting more?”

“It’s never happened before.”

“That doesn’t mean it couldn’t.” 

Aaron thought about Reid holding the door for him, waiting for his conversation, the look of worry he tried to hide on the jet. The profiler in him said Reid was masking still waters of his own. Reid just shrugged. Aaron leaned close until his lower lip brushed the crest of Reid’s upper one. Reid went stone still against him, even his breathing stopped. 

“If sex is all you can give, I’ll take it. Though I’d take more from you in a heartbeat, and if no one’s ever told you that, Spencer, I’m glad I’m the first.”

Reid’s breath stuttered back to life at that, and Aaron smiled against his lips without kissing him. Then Reid licked him in, capturing his mouth softly and kissing with the sort of care you don’t give to a stranger. They broke apart quietly and reconnected, Aaron’s eyes slipping closed as he enjoyed the simple thrill of that pull for its own sake. It had been so long since he kissed someone without history making it heavier than it should be. He felt like a kid again, kissing for the joy of discovering something new.

He cupped Reid’s jaw, drawing him deeper, brushing his lips with his tongue until Reid smiled against him. Reid cupped Aaron’s elbow to hold him in place, but Aaron’s fingers slipped into Reid’s hair and forced a moan from him as he opened willingly. Aaron hummed in delight at finding himself so well received; he thought he might be rusty at this.

“So, we’re doing this?” Reid mumbled between enthusiastic pulls. “Please say we’re doing this because I don’t want to stop kissing you now we’ve started…”

Aaron’s answer was to shrug out of his overcoat, which seemed a good enough response for Reid. There was an intricate dance to losing clothes; Reid stumbled a few times, and laughed at himself, grinning wide, lips flushed from attention. Aaron got hard from that alone and wondered if he’d ever been turned on by a smile before. When Reid finally grabbed Aaron’s shirt, there was a shiver of hesitation.

“You can leave it on if you want,” he breathed into Aaron’s mouth, kissing hard enough to erase almost all doubt.

“No, it’s fine. You know about them anyway.”

The shirt fell away and Reid’s fingers traced the scars like cracks in kintsugi. He lavished them with the warmth of his palms, and then, later, with whispers from his lips. Time skipped on Aaron; he got lost in grasping, stumbling and then quick bursts of laughter afterwards, startled breath that ended in a kiss, arms crisscrossing him, holding him up, holding him close… 

Then Aaron found himself on his back in a strange bed, with Reid bent impossibly over him. It felt like a fugue. He kissed the marks on Reid’s inner arm, traced the scar at his throat where a bullet narrowly missed. Reid watched him between kisses of his own, gaze sharp, but he never flinched, never told him no. Their journey there stretched and became disjointed – Aaron felt almost drunk with it – but he chose to ignore thought and give himself over to the feeling instead. How long ago had he given up on radical pleasure? When was the last time someone’s touch melted his defenses this easily? It wasn’t even important that he’d never slept with a man before. He felt buzzed with newness, fearless with uncomplicated joy. He wasn’t thinking past the next kiss, the next soft moan, the next impossible sensation to tighten him even further – nothing but the heaving pleasure of Spencer against him (because he was suddenly and irrevocably Spencer now) mattered. 

At some point, Spencer came, the rhythm of them hitching out of sync briefly as Spencer leaned back, stretching to his very limits, and pumped himself across Aaron’s chest with an impressive shout. He sagged on his haunches, head leaned back and gasping at the bedroom ceiling for a long moment, then he lurched to the bedside table and grabbed some tissues.

“ ‘Kay,” he choked, quickly wiping Aaron clean. “Now that’s out of the way…”

“What?” Aaron rasped, still out of sync and a step behind.

Spencer looked at him then, still shaking from his climax, with an impossibly warm gaze. “You really are pretty, Aaron. Dangerously, deceptively, intoxicatingly pretty. You’re making me sloppy.”

“I don’t…”

He never finished his thought. Spencer descended to his scarred stomach and began leaving wet halos as he slowly inched lower. The lavish sucking was almost cruel with the erotic power it wielded on Aaron. It didn’t seem right that someone so normally reserved should be so loud in bed. But Aaron didn’t complain when Spencer swallowed him down. Or when Spencer flipped him over, pinning him with a firm grip in his hair while he bucked Aaron’s painful hard-on into the mattress. And he certainly didn’t complain when Spencer moaned and sucked between Aaron’s thighs until he finally gave in, crying out until he was hoarse as Spencer worked him. Clearly, noisy bed manners were contagious as well. Afterwards, as Aaron gasped and twitched in the sheets, his only thought was if this was ‘just sex’, he had no idea what he’d been having for the past thirty years. 

Spencer watched him, sitting curled by Aaron’s side, hair in a riot of tangles while he smiled with bruised lips.

“What’s… funny?” Aaron finally managed.

“Nothing,” Spencer shook his head but grinned even harder. Then he dipped down and kissed him. “You’re a surprise, that’s all.”

Aaron closed his eyes and offered a thumbs-up that made Spencer chuckle. In his head he said, _‘so are you’_ , but didn’t have the breath to make it real. He focused on oxygen instead, and then felt himself float as it came more easily. The fugue stretched out on him again as he drifted between satiety and exhaustion. When he felt sheets sliding over his heated skin, and arms wrap him up, a calf curling around his, he murmured half-heartedly. He should get up, he should do something now… Lips shushed him, tracing his throat and licking away his taste with a quiet hum.

“Sleep.”

“ ‘pencer?”

“Stay and sleep. I want you to.”

“ ‘Kay…”

So, he did.


	7. Chapter 7

Aaron dressed quietly and then turned to face the bed. It wasn’t completely dark; Spencer’s hang-ups meant that every room had a light on somewhere, no matter how dim. He was on his side, loose-limbed and half emerging from tangled sheets, stretched and liquid in sleep with his hair strewn across the pillow like an exclamation. It was Garcia’s party all over again – sharpness transformed into sinuous curves, lines begging to be touched. Aaron wanted to climb back in, rouse him and just… draw his hands over him. It wasn’t about sex, and he knew it, so he remained where he was instead, on the outside looking in.

Spencer stretched and then blinked, stirring a little more when he saw Aaron was dressed. He rolled and watched him for a moment. Aaron wondered if he’d ask him to stay.

“What are you thinking about?” Spencer murmured.

Aaron smiled at that, because it surprised him, and then he spent a moment collecting his thoughts. The answer was complicated, and Spencer wasn’t interested in all of it, he knew.

“I was thinking about Shelley,” he said finally. Spencer’s eyebrows rose.

“The poet?”

“Yes. Or more accurately, his memorial at Oxford.”

“You were thinking about a sculpture.” It was Spencer’s turn to be surprised. He rolled further and tucked an arm behind his head as he waited for more, light warming his curves and softening the shadows’ edges. It was no longer pretty; it was dazzling, imperative.

“Have you ever seen it?”

Spencer shook his head, no.

“I have. Once, when I was a younger man. It’s quite something – photos don’t do it justice.” Aaron sighed as he watched Spencer watch him. “I was looking at you and thinking about it.”

Spencer didn’t say anything, just gazing up with an open expression that made Aaron feel as though he could tell him anything. It was a dangerous feeling.

“The memorial isn’t really about Shelley. He was a foolish man who died a silly death.”

“Yes,” Spencer murmured. “A man with a fickle heart, little sense of self-preservation, radical thoughts, a neglectful father… I’m waiting to discover where you’re finding parallels here.”

Aaron smiled and stepped to the edge of the bed. He stooped and brushed his fingers through Spencer’s hair as Spencer’s eyes got wider.

“It’s a beautiful sculpture. The lines of it, the light on the marble, his expression of peace, of vulnerability… it pulls you in. Makes you want to reach out for it, to touch that beauty.” 

Aaron’s fingers drifted from Spencer’s hair, down the side of his face, skipping along his throat, and then tracing the line of his ribs until they stopped at the apex of his hip where the sheet rested. Aaron circled his fingers there, once, twice, and then pushed the sheet down, bending to place the faintest kiss on that sharp angle. It wasn’t about arousal or even familiarity; it was reverence, and therefore a huge risk for someone who’d been warned about wanting more. When Aaron glanced back up, Spencer seemed frozen in shock, mouth open, free hand twitching at the edge of the sheet as if he was suddenly uncomfortable with the exposure. Aaron sighed and stood straight again.

“Of course, you can’t touch it. The memorial is roped off, so you’re left there yearning to be transformed by something you can’t have. That’s the genius of it – it inspires through denial. It turns the memory of a flawed man into religious ecstasy. People fall in love with it because it makes them feel better, makes them want more from their lives. Imagine having that sort of power.”

Spencer lay there blinking, mouth moving, and then closing as if he’d been struck mute. Aaron watched him for a moment, then cupped his jaw and bent to leave another soft kiss, this time on his brow.

“I could worship you,” he murmured against Spencer’s skin. “It would be easy. But you were clear about this, and I understand.”

He stepped back, letting his hand skim down Spencer’s throat one last time before he collected his jacket from where it had been tossed away earlier.

“I guess I can’t help but care. But I couldn’t stop myself either. You drew me in, and it was beautiful.”

“Aaron…I…” Spencer rose up on one elbow, looking worried. The sheet shifted as he moved and so did the light. His lines became sharp definitions, losing their fluidity but none of their ability to mesmerize. Aaron lifted his hand to stop him.

“We’re okay,” he whispered reassuringly, though it hurt him to do it. “I’ll see you at the office, alright?”

He waited for Spencer to nod, then he turned and walked out. When he closed the apartment door behind him and headed down the hallway, he decided it was a _good_ end, if not a satisfying one, and he smiled to himself for managing that much.


	8. Chapter 8

He got to the office at his usual time, but he rode the elevator alone. 

The team trickled in at eight-thirty, and then into the conference room at nine for a caseload update. There were hushed conversations as people settled, file folders sliding across the table, and bodies sinking into chairs… Aaron was busy checking over an expense report he was about to send to accounting when a mug was placed next to him. He looked up and Spencer was there, his own coffee cup cradled in long fingers. The gesture was nothing special, something that happened all the time and no one thought twice about. But Spencer’s expression was new. It was dangerously open, confused and exposed, with pink highlighting his cheeks. Aaron was immediately breathless – he thought he’d done the right thing, the kind thing – but maybe he’d alarmed Spencer in some way.

“Thank you,” Aaron mumbled, watching cautiously as he edged the gifted coffee closer to himself.

Spencer usually didn’t respond to thanks, perhaps a shoulder shrug now and again. This time he kept staring and quietly said, “It’s my pleasure.”

Aaron felt heat of his own rising in his face and had to quickly hide it under shuffling that signaled people should get ready to begin their day. Spencer lingered for a moment and then slipped away to his traditional seat. When Aaron glanced at them all, Spencer had corralled himself, showing nothing but his respectful attention and a faint blush slowly fading from him. Aaron cleared his throat and rolled his jacket across his shoulders, trying to push away the incendiary _something_ that was splashing up inside him. The questions burned: Why? What did it mean? What do I do with this?

But the only one he asked was, “Okay, so where are we at this morning?”


	9. Chapter 9

Spencer got home late, but it didn’t matter – it was still early for someone who didn’t sleep too much. He’d collected his mail on the way in. Mostly junk flyers, a few bills, a letter from his mother that he smiled at and would read before bed, as was his custom. But there was one more in the stack. No return address, but he recognized the handwriting instantly. He dropped the other correspondence to the coffee table, hitting the edge and making them spill across his floor instead. He didn’t care. He just ripped open the plain envelope and pulled out the single sheet with its measured script.

 

_I’ve taken my time to consider this and am risking putting it down on paper to affirm my choice._

_#4578_

_You are right. I can’t do this without care – my waters run very deep. But I understood your position and continue to respect it. If you’ve changed your mind however, you know where I am._

_Don’t come if you expect it to be “just” anything. Only come if you want the possibility of everything._

 

Spencer reread it several times to be sure. He didn’t want to fall into misunderstanding. But it was certainly clearer than he had been. It was dated the day after their evening together, but the postmark was several days after that. As promised, he had taken his time with it. He refolded the paper carefully and placed it on the table before him. Then he collected the letters he’d dropped in his haste. He lifted his mother’s letter, thick as they often were, and had a moment’s discontent that he wouldn’t get to read it tonight. But Mom would understand. Something less tangible, but more hypnotic demanded his attention. Enthrallment was something Diana Reid encouraged, even with its inherent dangers. He smiled at that thought and felt himself blush for her sake.

“Tomorrow, Mom. I promise,” he murmured.

Then he fished out his car keys and grabbed the go bag he’d dropped just inside the door. Much later, in a darkened room across the city, he rolled against the compulsion that had tortured him quietly for years and whispered, “How did you know?” But the truth, when discovered, was far from miraculous and seemed to revolve around Garcia making them aware that they were both quite pretty.


End file.
